Mistakes

We had been in Guatemala a few days, walked the mar­ket a few times, set up the OR’s and been in the clin­ics; we were work­ing hard by this time. The OR was full of cases. Three oper­at­ing tables – they are not called beds; I guess no one is rest­ing – were side by side in one big­ger room. The only air con­di­tioner for a mile was purring along inad­e­quately for the after­noon heat. I was work­ing away on a her­nia and think­ing about my Spanish.

I was born in Panama. My par­ents are flu­ent in Span­ish, hav­ing worked in Ecuador for years as doc­tors. My sis­ter is flu­ent in Span­ish the way she is in Eng­lish: no dif­fer­ence for her. Span­ish has shaped her life. I spent my child­hood in South Texas, friends with Mex­i­cans. I spent two sum­mers in the Domini­can Repub­lic with my Domini­can best friend Danny. I spoke Span­ish pass­ably after those sum­mers. So, in high school and col­lege I “stud­ied” French. This has been recounted (http://​www​.bend​light​.me/​2​0​1​0​/​0​8​/​l​o​o​k​-​a​t​-​us/) and you could (re)read it. It is just as hilar­i­ous as this. I was smart then and, of course, French, right? Makes per­fect sense.

I stud­ied French because I would not be boxed in to Span­ish. I repeat, I was smart. My her­nia patient is wak­ing up and gur­gling and so, of course, I call Lia, the inter­preter, over to help. She, you know, inter­prets the gur­gles into Span­ish and Eng­lish, because I did not learn Span­ish. I don’t know what gur­gle is in Span­ish. For our team, the inter­preters com­plete the oper­a­tion. They put the clo­sure on the wounds, like ver­bal stitches. I hate them and their easy, effer­ves­cent con­ver­sa­tions. I love them and their expert help and their mel­liflu­ous cadence of Span­ish. When they talk the words have a regal rhythm, like Andalu­sians pranc­ing, but ver­bally. Any­way, it’s like that all week, lov­ing and hating.

When you speak another lan­guage every­one is poten­tially inter­est­ing. Every­one is potential.

The great thing about Span­ish speak­ing peo­ple, at least in Cen­tral Amer­ica, is that they put up with the effort of the gringo. They love an attempt at com­mu­ni­cat­ing. This is in con­trast to the French. My Parisian French teacher (again, http://​www​.bend​light​.me/​2​0​1​0​/​0​8​/​l​o​o​k​-​a​t​-​us/ same link) was not so for­giv­ing, although you will read that I could have cared less, but that is that story. The Guatemalans, alter­na­tively, loved a try. They smiled always and nod­ded me in to my next con­ju­gat­ing dis­as­ter – I guess those are dif­fer­ent than con­ju­gal dis­as­ters. Lin­gual mis­takes can be fun (or at least instruc­tive) if the audi­ence will put up with one’s shortcomings…I’ll stop.

As my son learns Eng­lish it is all about fail­ing. He mis­pro­nounces every­thing. He comes close to “yel­low” by say­ing lleyl­low and tries again after I say, “yes, buddy, ‘yel­low!!!!!!’.” Etc. Same as walk­ing. When he learned to walk it was about falling. When he speaks it is about say­ing it wrong and hav­ing no shame or fear and say­ing it again and again. Point, say: repeat. Lan­guage learned. My brain can learn a lan­guage. My ego has sim­ply to get out of the way.

To prac­tice let­ting my ego off the hook, I take fuzzy pho­tos. From my ear­li­est days with a Canon AT-1, fully man­ual SLR, I have allowed myself end­less rope in pho­tog­ra­phy. I rel­ish mis­takes and I know that they mat­ter and are beau­ti­ful. My father instilled this in me by mak­ing sure I knew that it was ok to burn through any num­ber of rolls of real film for the one photo. Any­thing could be thrown away. It’s art – it’s to be dis­carded, until it isn’t. And some­where along the line I have learned that the blurs can be won­der­ful, like a green table of let­tuce becom­ing a ver­dant stream. Good enough. Beau­ti­ful even. My Span­ish is on the way, this way, by blurry errors and beau­ti­ful mistakes.